Open fails to give Woods driving test

In the aftermath of Sunday's climax to the 135th Open Championship, while his boss was carrying out his winner's duties, Tiger Woods's caddie Steve Williams pulled out a piece of paper from his back pocket on which he had written a list of the shots hit by the world No1 over the preceding four days that did not quite meet the pair's definition of being perfectly struck.

"That's all there is," the New Zealander said, showing the paper to onlookers. On it were written the details of just three of the 270 shots it took for Woods to win his third Claret Jug: a six-iron that flew to the right of the 4th green on Thursday, a seven-iron to the 7th green on Saturday that ended up in a greenside bunker, and a four-iron approach to the 12th on Sunday that flew over the green, from where he made bogey.

A pedant might have suggested that Woods's three three-putts during Saturday's third round deserved a place in any litany of imperfections but there seemed little point. For one thing Williams is a big, chiselled fellow who does not take kindly to being contradicted and, for another, to complain about a few trifling mistakes on Saturday after witnessing Woods's efforts over four days at Hoylake would be like reading the manuscript of Ulysses and complaining about Joyce's spidery handwriting.

"Probably the best ball-striking round I have ever had," the Open champion said of his closing 67, which was quite a statement from a man who usually prefers to let his clubs do his talking.

It is worth noting that Woods did not describe it as the best round of golf he had ever played. Nor did he take the opportunity to claim Hoylake 2006 as the finest of his 11 major championship wins, although there were plenty of people in the Royal Liverpool clubhouse bar on Sunday night willing to make that case. The hometown euphoria was understandable but surely nothing in Woods's golfing career will match his performance in the 2000 US Open at Pebble Beach, where he beat the field by 15 shots.

Yet there were elements of his four days on Merseyside that will live in the memory forever, not least the way he conceived a plan for playing a tricky links and stuck to that plan with unshakable concentration. In the run-up to the tournament much had been made of Phil Mickelson's decision to travel to Hoylake weeks in advance. The Californian spent a series of nine-hour days on the links working out how to play a course that had not hosted an Open since 1967. By contrast, Woods arrived the weekend before, headed out for his first practice round and, according to his long-time coach Hank Haney, took less than an hour to work out a method of playing the course.

"Actually, it took two holes to figure out the strategy of hitting long irons off the tee," Haney said. "Once we saw there was bunkers on both sides of the fairways and if you got in them you would probably be chipping out sideways, we knew the only thing to do was play short of them."

At times Woods found himself 70 yards behind his playing partners, who often chose to hit drivers. But, crucially, he did not find himself in a single fairway bunker all week. Asked what that particular statistic said about his pupil's performance the ever droll Haney replied: "That he is pretty good with long-iron play."

There is no denying this, but there is also a case to be made that Woods's victory on Sunday was slightly diminished by the fact that the Royal Liverpool course, for all its magnificence, placed no requirement on him to hit his driver, which is by far the weakest club in his bag. Put him on a golf course which demands that he does and the dominance he showed at Hoylake might not be so apparent. Again, Haney was having none of it. "People kept doubting him and they keep doubting me as a coach. The fact is he played so well this week that he was always going to win this tournament. He was not going to be denied."

The other indelible memory of the 2006 Open was the sight of the champion exiting the final green on Sunday night in floods of tears. "I have never seen him so emotional," Haney said. "He got through speaking at his father's funeral better than he got through this."

Given Woods's closeness to his father, who died in May, the reaction to winning was to be expected, although Williams was willing to provide some insight into his friend's emotional state. "He wanted to win the Masters [in April] so much because he knew that was probably going to be the last major Earl would see. He probably pushed too hard for it.

"But here he just let it happen and it did. It was just a shame Earl wasn't here to see it."